I spied a brochure at the local council library on threatened plant species for our local area. I've been noticing a few native grasses and flowers around the place and was hoping to keep an eye out for some of the rarer ones and learn what to remove and what to leave be. We have plenty of lomandra and dianella around which are flowering and fruiting at the moment.
On the final page of the brochure I spotted a logo for a native fish program. We'd been planning to stock our dam with local fish for mosquito control, a food source for local birds and perhaps eventually our own plates. So I called the council about the program: "Oh I haven't heard about that for a while, let me just find out." The council have been very helpful each time I've called them and they didn't let me down this time either. We were to arrange a time at the pound to pick up the native fish. The next day I headed over there to pick up six fingerlings. I was a little disappointed when the response to my question of what type of fish was "they eat mosquitoes." Nevertheless they didn't cost us anything and would do their job. The most common fish to use if silver perch and I have the impression that's what these are.
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| Acclimatising before release |
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| Most likely silver perch and unphotogenic ones at that |
The fish are now swimming free, feasting on mosquito larvae and with any luck avoiding the turtle and swamp hens.
They look like they will do the job nicely - if they survive the turtle and hens which I'm sure they will!
ReplyDeleteWe have just been given a few leopard fish for our pond, which are not dissimilar. Anything to keep the mosquitoes down is a bonus.
Leopard fish sound exotic! Mosquitoes are a bit of a problem here but hopefully the fish and all the frogs around will get them under control soon.
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